The W3C has released a logo for HTML5. I’ve been broadly supportive of this since I was told about it last year, but can’t help feeling a little disappointed that wrapped up in there are references to CSS in there.

Mashable reports that

Quote:

logo designer Michael Nieling said in a statement, “The term HTML5 has taken on a life of its own; there has been significant confusion…as to what exactly HTML5 is when the term is used outside of simply referring to the spec itself”

Quite.

In order to alleviate that confusion, let me point again to my video rant HTML5 != CSS3 rant:

Today brings to us the news that the W3C have unveiled a logo for HTML5. Does an open technology need a logo? Perhaps not, but many see it as a good idea, including myself. I think it is a great idea to create a rallying flag/focus point for people to use to show their support of HTML5, and to help increase awareness and propagation of this important new technology, thereby aiding the evolution of the open web.

But wait, things are not quite right. If you delve deeper you’ll see that, included in their definition of the technology that comprises HTML5, is CSS3, WOFF, SVG, and a few other cuckoos in the HTML5 nest. If you look at the HTML5 Logo FAQ, you’ll find the following:

Quote:

The logo is a general-purpose visual identity for a broad set of open web technologies, including HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, and others.

This really isn’t good—I appreciate that it is good to have an umbrella term for a group of related technologies and technologies that would otherwise be difficult to talk about in conversation. “Ajax” and “Web 2.0” serve that purpose well. And it is ok to talk about closely-related specs such as Geolocation and Web Sockets as being under the HTML5 umbrella, as long as you clarify it somewhere (you can find a good example in Get familiar with HTML5!). But this is different—HTML5 and CSS3, for example, are two distinctly different technologies, and should not be confused with one another. To do so will impede learning and cause problems with development, documentation, and all manner of other things.

You could perhaps forgive marketers for getting it confused, but then again their confusion is not so critical as long as their end product looks and works great, and they have a web developer behind them to put them right at critical points. But I have talked to many web developers that are confused, and honestly think that CSS3 and SVG are part of HTML5.